Wow!!! With it wrapped in a nice little package, Donahue still didn't get it.

Posted by: maddirishman at
February 9, 2010 10:34 PM

We should all go watch both of the Donahue interviews on YouTube.

Posted by: maddirishman at
February 10, 2010 9:57 AM

Wow. Friedman admits capitalism only works if individuals manipulate the system.
How the hell did St. Ronnie make hay on his "welfare queens" story?
Whatever the answer is, MVH (for one) is absolutely sure it wasn't (heaven forbid) racism.
Yeah, right.

Posted by: Berto at
February 10, 2010 12:10 PM

Wow. Friedman doesn't argue at all that capitalism only works for individuals who manipulate the system.
Yet St. Ronnie "made hay" out of his made-up story about Cadillac-driving welfare queens. You'd think Americans would admire them. I wonder why they didn't.
I'm sure MVH (for one) will insist that it wasn't (God forbid) racism*. What's the explanation?

* As he has pointed out to me in the past, it was just a coincidence that a good chunk of Americans incorrectly felt the CRA was to blame for the financial crisis. I suppose it just as easily could have been blamed on sun spots.

Crank, if as you write in a post below, "experience is the lifeblood of conservatism, after all, because it represents the collected lessons of trial and error of the greatest number of people," how do you explain the continued conservative claim that cutting taxes increases revenues when all data show precisely the opposite result?

Posted by: magrooder at
February 11, 2010 1:08 PM

Superfly!

Posted by: joe at
February 12, 2010 7:18 AM

magrooder, experience clearly shows that marginal tax rate cuts produce economic growth, which expands the tax base; marginal rate hikes do the opposite. Inasmuch as the government exists to serve the people rather than the other way around, that's the main reason to support tax cuts whenever feasible.

Unlike some others, I have never argued that all tax cuts always produce enough expansion in the tax base to pay for themselves; the degree of offset depends where you are on the Laffer Curve, and of course the Laffer Curve is itself a theoretical approximation that needs to be adjusted with experience. (IIRC, we had overall expansions in tax revenue after the Kennedy, Reagan & Bush tax cuts and in cap gains revenue after the Clinton cut in cap gains taxes - obviously there's going to be debate over the contribution of rate changes to those phenomena) What I do find contemptibly dishonest is the longstanding Democratic tax-scoring practice of assuming that changes in marginal tax rates have no impact whatsoever on anyone's behavior or economic activity.